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Sunday, September 6, 2015

Home in NYC.

We're back to NYC, ready to start another school year! Fall for me, is spring cleaning time. After being away all summer to our home on Long Island, coming back to NYC, means, clean out and reorganize. (Before fall madness begins!)

My kitchen got the biggest clean out. I do not have a large kitchen, so things get pileup on my counters. After a while, I'm left with very little work area... So, now, I'm set to go. Dust bunnies, be gone!

I collect cookbooks to read like novels. Crazy, I know, but I love cooking and food as much as I love quilting! So as an hour of rest, I choose two cookbooks, and two cooking magazines, to sit down with and post it note, a whole bunch of recipes.

I get so many comments from people saying, "How do you get it all done?"

here is how I get my family fed:

I post-it-note about 20 new recipes in a few random cookbooks.

On the post-it-note, I write out the shopping list.

I look for recipes that sound fast, delicious, and for things I know I will often have on hand.

Now, when I'm ready to make the recipe, I grab the shopping list and go get the extra ingredients I don't have.

Saves me tons of time, and I can revisit the many, many cookbooks I have, and actually put them to use.

That hour is my sit-down-and-relax time. A cookbook to me, is like sitting down to read a magazine... I enjoy finding new recipes that I can share with my family.

Now that my shelves and kitchen is freshly organized, I hit the studio...

Thankfully I left it clean, before I went to Texas. So it's been sitting here waiting for me! I moved a few things around, updated my fabric storage with a console table, taken out of my home,(sits on top of my fabric unit) and bought two new desks from IKEA.

I actually made 'less room' for the sewing/piecing area... I found the larger 6' tables I had used previously, to just be a dumping area for "stuff",

So I bought these desks that are 15" shorter...

This also gives me more room for my jukiQVP 2200 sit down machine. I can now walk easily around the tables and the QVP, to get to my design walls.

I still have boxes of "stuff" (for a lack of a better word...) crammed under my JUKI long arm. Friends will soon be asked to come "dig and take" :-) ...The fastest way to declutter my studio!

I'm off to do some school shopping today, and to just enjoy this beautiful September day. I hope you do the same!

Great job! You really have a system working for your other creative outlet...cooking. And your studio looks so spacious now without those big tables. My dining room table collects everything, too. But what I really envy are those fat rolls of batting at hand. Maybe if I moved the sofa...

I do the same thing with cookbooks - read them like novels. People have found that strange. I am glad there is someone else who does that, too. Have you seen the ones by Nigel Slater? "Ripe" and "Tender"are the two I have on fruits and vegetables, respectively. Beautiful prose. Gorgeous photos

I think we had a conversation about our love of reading cookbooks. I think your idea of posting needed items on a post-it note attached to the book cover is inspired! I'm going to borrow that. I use my iPhone with a "grocery" entry into my call database. I add the missing ingredients in the "notes" section as I move along through the week as I know I often forget that post-it note when I leave for the store. Love the new studio set-up. Wish B a great start to the new school year. See you soon! xo

I read cookbooks and food magazines for leisure, too - I may even have more of them than quilting books and magazines??? I recycle envelopes for my shopping lists but my sister-in-law has a small whiteboard in her kitchen for her shopping list and takes a picture with her phone before she heads out the door. I thought that was an idea worth sharing.

It is actually spring here in Australia now and my thoughts are slowly turning to the dust keeping my furniture warm - thanks for the spur along.......

As someone who will be taking delivery very soon of a sit-down Juki 2200, I enjoyed seeing yours setup. About the recipes...yes, I too love to sit down with a new cookbook (from the library!) to find a new recipe or two. I sticky-tab the pages, then look up the recipe online. Most can be found on blogs. I then 'clip' them to Evernote where I keep two notebooks: My Recipes and Recipes to Try. If an ingredient is something I don't keep in stock, I capitalize that ingredient. I put this week's menu in the Shortcuts to easily find them. If something is on sale at the grocery, I can search for all recipes with that word and then I know what else to buy...its all on my phone. I LOVE EVERNOTE!!

Have you looked at eatyourbooks.com You enter all your books (you can get a scanner app) then when you want to try, say, scones, it tells you all your books, magazines, and blogs that have scones. When you put in magazines, it automatically includes the next issue when it's released if you subscribe. It's not the recipes it the indexes. I have about 300 books (I read them also). It's fantastic. I can also go look at the books my girlfriend has so we can plan a menu together.